Video games: New furniture, controllers and screens are helping to make video games even more immersive and realistic

AUDRA MCIVER, a publicist, was attending the New York Toy Fair in February when she came across a display of gaming chairs—seats designed specifically for playing video games. She sat down to try one, and the experience proved to be so engrossing that she remained in the chair, glued to the screen and playing “Project Gotham Racing 3”, for several hours. Passers by began asking her for product details, thinking she worked for the chair's manufacturer, at which point she realised just how long she had been sitting in it. “That was a great chair—I just loved it,” she recalls.

Most gamers are quite happy to sit on a sofa or a beanbag when playing “Gears of War” or “Grand Theft Auto”. But as other aspects of gaming become more realistic, from high-definition graphics to vibrating controllers, manufacturers sense an opportunity to offer dedicated gaming furniture, controllers designed for specific gaming genres and new types of fancy screens.

The Raptor, for example, made by the Ultimate Game Chair company, has built-in speakers and features 12 motors that provide a full-body version of the vibration effects delivered through hand-held controllers. Pyramat's S5000 Sound Rocker is another chair with built-in speakers; it uses wireless technology to beam the audio signals from the console. The Nethrone goes further: it is an ergonomic seat in an adjustable chrome frame which doubles as a monitor stand. The whole thing looks like a machine for subjecting astronauts to high G-forces, but is meant to allow gamers to play while reclining in comfort.

Fancy controllers are another way to increase the realism of certain games. Racing games found in arcades have steering wheels and pedals; wheels such as Logitech's NASCAR Racing Wheel can now be bought for use at home by those truly obsessed with driving simulators. The same is true of joysticks. The most advanced models, such as the ThrustMaster Top Gun Afterburner Force Feedback made by Guillemot, now resemble those found in fighter aircraft in their layout and complexity.

The popularity of the “Guitar Hero” series of games, in which players must press coloured buttons in time with classic rock tracks, means that many televisions in gaming households now have small, plastic electric-guitar controllers propped up next to them. “Rock Band”, a game in a similar vein that will be released later this year, will have bass-guitar and drum-kit controllers, too. Players may look ridiculous, but they would not enjoy such games nearly as much without these special controllers.

A lot of innovation is also going on in the field of displays. PC gamers tend to sit right in front of their screens while gaming, whereas console gamers tend to sit a bit further away. Sitting close to a large display, be it a monitor or a widescreen television, provides a particularly immersive experience, because the game occupies almost all of the player's field of vision. Taking that a step further, Matrox, a Canadian firm that makes display cards for PCs, has devised “TripleHead2Go”. This is a box that combines three separate monitors so that they behave like a single, very large, very wide monitor. In games with a first-person perspective, such as “Unreal” or “Half-Life 2”, the monitors can then be arranged to mimic peripheral vision. And flight-simulator fans can simulate the view from an aircraft's cockpit windows.

Mitsubishi, meanwhile, is adding a new feature called “Game FX” to its ultra-large DLP televisions (which measure up to 73 inches diagonally). This will double the usual frame-rate to enable two separate sets of images to be interleaved. Using special glasses, players can alternate between images for the right and left eyes, so that the television becomes a three-dimensional display, at least for games that support this feature.

A different approach to immersion comes from Philips, which includes a technology called amBX in some of its televisions. Its main feature is “ambient lighting”, in which lights behind and around the screen bathe the room with the same hues shown on screen. Also available are extra speakers, fans and vibration packs, all of which can be triggered when necessary by suitably programmed games. Several video-game publishers, including Codemasters, Gearbox Software and THQ, have agreed to support the technology.

Where will it all end? Harvey Smith, a respected game designer who has worked on titles including “System Shock” and “Thief”, says the most immersive experiences depend not on fancy technology, but on good design, and the ability to create a coherent and believable game world. Despite all the gadgets that are now available, he says, “nothing is as immersive as a good book.”